When you think about a wine you normally don't think of it in terms of being in a good mood, humorous or even under-the-weather, but there is a term used by the wine making industry that might make you think that such terms are appropriate.

Bottle sickness is often used to describe a wine that has taken a plunge in

quality, usually right after bottling. It is referred to as a "sickness" because the effects are temporary and with a little rest the wine will come back to its good-ole self once again.

Bottle sickness (also referred to as "bottle shock" or "travel shock") occurs when the wine absorbs too much oxygen in too little time, something that is likely to happen in the wine making process, particularly during bottling. Wines can handle the slow, gradual infusion of air that is naturally allowed by wine corks. In fact, most red wines will benefit from such a scenario, but when the oxygen comes too fast a build-up of an element called acetaldehyde starts to become prevalent in the wine.

Acetaldehyde is naturally found in any wine, at least in small, unnoticeable amounts, but in higher amounts its presence can be detected as an odor of rotting apples or nuts. This is what's noticed in wines that are suffering from bottle shock. The overall impression the wine gives can be described as flat or flabby, or just plain lacking in fruitiness.

Over the course of time the acetaldehyde will slowly convert to alcohol, bringing the wine back into line with something enjoyable to drink. How long this takes depends on the severity of the sickness. It could be as little as a few days or as long as a few weeks.

This is just one more reason of many as to why aging is so important in wine making. You could pick up a newly bottled wine from your cellar one week and wonder why it's so lifeless then the next week be overwhelmed by its superb flavor.

Dear E. C. Kraus

I am looking to purchase wine bottles for the first time, the (GL220) wine bottle. Your wine making information on the bottle does not give any information on if you are supposed to use a #7or #8 cork for this wine bottle, or is there a standard wine bottle opening? Also do you carry the tools to insert the cork into the wine bottle?  

Dan R.
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Dear Dan R.

Fortunately for home winemakers, the wine making industry has long-ago settled on a standard opening for the regular-sized 750ml wine bottle--what also used to be called fifths. All of these wine bottles have the same standard size opening of 3/4 inch.

The same holds true for all the 750ml's wine bottles we offer. The only exceptions are the screw cap finish wine bottles and the champagne bottles we carry, both of which are not designed to take a cork of any kind anyway.

The commercial wine making industry uses size #9 straight cork which is 15/16 inches in diameter for these openings. This size of a cork does require a wine making corker to insert them. Any of the wine making corkers we offer will put them in just fine, however there are some inferior corker models out on the market that will have trouble putting the full-size #9 corks. So beware. If you have one of these corkers, then you may need to go to a size #8 straight cork instead of size #9.

For more information on this subject you may want to take a look at "Corking Your Wine Bottles" which is listed on our web site.

Best Wishes,
Customer Service at E. C. Kraus

From the incredible prices that get shouted around at a Sotherby's wine auction, to the fluffy, sensationalized articles that float around in today's life-styles magazines, people are continuously being fed the notion that the older a wine is the better it will taste. Unfortunately, this is a generalization that is very rarely

ever true. Except for a few rare vintages, there comes a point in any wine's life where it would be better just to drink up!

The aging cycle of a today's commercial wines are fairly well mapped and predictable. Based on the type of wine, how it was made, combined with an observation of its character at bottling, a timeline can be laid out by the winery that shows the optimum time to drink that particular wine. Once this theoretical point is reached, any additional aging is futile. In fact, too much aging beyond that point will result in a decrease of the wine's quality.

An example of one of these timelines can be found in the article "Aging-Aren't We All..." written by Harry Pederson-Nedry of Chehalem Winery and posted on "Avalon Wine's" website. It's a great article by the way and I encourage you to read it, but if you'll scroll down into the article you will see a chart that maps the quality rating through time for several vintages of Chehalem Winery's Pinot Noirs. As you can see there is a rapid-rise period, a flattening-out period and long-slow death period for each of the wines mapped out.

This same type of timeline holds true for homemade wines. There will come a point in time for each wine where more aging is not necessarily a good thing and holding on to it will only provide you with a ride down the "long-slow death" period.

The whole point of bringing this up is that some home winemakers get into the game of collecting their wines instead of drinking them, putting bottles away like baseball cards thinking they're going to become more exceptional as time goes by, but in reality this is little more than a waste of good wine.

By all means let the wine age as needed. It may take 3 months; it may take 3 years for it to mellow and develop any potential complexities. To find out pull a bottle every now and then to determine if it is still improving, but when no improvement can be detected between samples then, simply put, the wine's clock is ticking.

This is a question we get from time to time that has no single, correct answer. This is for three reasons: 1) everyones' tastes are different, 2) how the wine is stored during the aging makes a difference as well, and 3) certain varieties will take advantage of aging more so than others.

Dear E. C. Kraus

I am interested in purchasing the Vinterra Amarone concentrate. After the initial 6 week waiting time, is it drinkable, or should I let the wine age longer before drinking, and how long will it age for?

Joe
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Dear Joe,

The wine will be drinkable at bottling time (6 weeks) but will continue to improve with aging. It is important to realize that most wine varieties will improve remarkably over the first 30 to 60 days and marginally so every month thereafter. Having said this, there will come a point in any wine's life where its quality will peak.

The producers of the Vinterra Amarone recommend that the wine be aged at least for 2 month before consumption is started. They also suggest that any aging beyond 30 months is of no value to the wine.

Best Wishes,
Customer Service at E. C. Kraus
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This chart below lists the recommended aging period for each brand of wine ingredient kit we carry. Please realize that this chart represents guidelines for aging. Your wine could need more or less aging depending on how it is being stored. For more information on this subject you may want to take a look at the article "Wine Bottle Storage and Temperature" listed on our website.

RECOMMENDED AGING TIMES:

Using Campden Tablets or an equivalent at bottling time is important for keeping a wine fresh while in the bottle. The idea is to keep the sulfites from the Campden trapped in the bottle. Here is an email question about this.

Dear E. C. Kraus,

I am reading through your website to learn home wine making and plan to purchase the fruit starter kit. I was reading that campden tablets should be added just before

bottling. Does this mean that you add campden tablets to the must before bottling and then immediately bottle, or do you have to wait for the sulfur gas to escape before bottling?

Thanks!
Brand new to wine making,
Justin
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Dear Justin,

The idea is to keep the sulfur gas trapped in the bottles so that the wine's flavor and color will be preserved. What this means for you is that once the Campden Tablets are dissolved and completely mixed into the wine you will want to bottle right away.

Treating your wine in this way will help to keep it fresh tasting for years to come. This process is no different than what a winery would routinely implement on their wine and results in about 55 part-per-million of sulfur dioxide.

Best Wishes,
Customer Service at E. C. Kraus

Getting wine bottles ready to use is a task that can make some beginning winemakers nervous. "Am I preparing my bottles correctly?", they might think to themselves, "And, if I'm not, what is it going to do to my wine?". These are legitimate concerns, but they are also concerns that can be laid to rest fairly easily.

There are two overlying rules that must be appreciated when preparing wine bottles for their task: bottles must be clean; and bottles

must be sanitized. Follow both rules and you will have no problems; ignore them and you'll be rolling the dice with the potential spoilage of your wine.

THE BOTTLES MUST BE CLEAN
What this means is the bottles must be made clear of any visually detected dirt, grime, etc. In the case of new wine bottles this is taken care of for you. Except for a little dust that may have collected on the outside of the bottles, they are clean and ready to go.

If you are reusing wine bottles, then they must be cleaned with dish soap. To use an example, you want to clean them in the traditional way you would think of cleaning your dishes. Use a bottle brush to get inside the bottle and scrub in the bottom corners of the bottle with soapy water. Use a wash rag on the outside of each bottle.

BOTTLES MUST BE SANITIZED
When you sanitize a bottle what you are doing is eliminating almost all of the germs that are on and in the bottle.

If the bottles have been previously used, we recommend using a strong cleaner such as CleanPro SDH to sanitize the bottles. CleanPro SDH is a bleach that rinses away very easily with cold water. Just soak the bottles for 20 minutes in a solution of water and CleanPro SDH as directed on the label and then rinse.

If the bottles are new then using CleanPro SDH is not necessary. In this situation you will want to use Sodium Bisulfite. Just mix up a solution with water as directed on the label and then pour one or two inches worth into each bottle and let sit for 20 minutes. The gas from the solution will do the sterilizing. After 20 minutes just drain the bottle--no need to rinse--and it is ready for the wine.

USEFUL ITEMS
A couple of items we offer that helps make sanitizing your wine bottles easier is our Bottle Sulphatizer and Bottle Tree. The Bottle Sulphatizer is used to spray Sodium Bisulfite solution into each bottle and the Bottle Tree is used to easily drain the bottles.

Dear Kraus,

I recently made KenRidge Chilean Chardonnay and bottled it at the end of December. While the taste of the wine is fine, any wine left in the bottle (re-corked) for two days turns the color orange.

The wine fermented correctly, all directions were followed, and the wine was filtered prior to bottling.

What is the cause of the wine turning orange in color? is this a

health hazard?, and is there anything I can do now to prevent this colorization?

Thanks,
Terry
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Dear Terry,

The answer is very simple. Your wine is oxidizing.

Oxidation is a process that occurs when a wine is exposed to excessive oxygen for too long of time. Once the cork is pulled from a wine bottle, you are allowing air to enter the bottle which starts the oxidative process.

The first signs of oxidation will show itself as light orange tinge that will later turn to a light amber, then dark amber, then brown. It is perfectly safe to drink, however you will probably notice some deterioration in the wine's overall character.

There are some things you can do to help reduce the occurrence of oxidation:

Add sulfites to the wine at bottling time. Doing this will delay the oxidative process once the bottle is opened. It will also help the wine to keep better while in storage.

Keep partial bottles in the refrigerator. Cooler temperatures will slow down the oxidative process.

Use a Vacuvin Wine Saver on partial bottles. The Vacuvin Wine Saver allows you to pump the air out of the bottle, keeping it fresh for weeks. Very effective.

-- And, then there's the most effective solution of all... drink the whole bottle!

If you want to read more about oxidation and how it effects a wine you may want to take a look at the article, "Controlling Oxidation In Your Homemade Wines."

Best Wishes,
Customer Service at E. C. Kraus

One of the biggest debates going on in the wine community these days is whether corks should be dropped in favor of the screw cap. The screw caps seems to be a hard pill to swallow for many wineries, but

there is a growing group of studies that suggest the screw cap is the way of the future.

Many wineries in Australia and New Zealand have already embraced the screw cap stating that the elimination of possible cork taint, alone, is reason enough for change. Some of these studies are also showing that quality is improved when wines are stored under screw cap, whites improving more so than reds.

But opposition to this move comes by way of a plea for esthetics. Market competitiveness causes hesitation among wineries fearing their screw-capped wines will appear cheap and not sell as briskly as the corked wines of their competitors.

Some U.S. wineries are closing their bottles with both cork and screw cap. One such winery is Tablas Creek Vineyard in Paso Robles, CA. Their philosophy states what is right for one wine may not be right for the next, making closures--in effect--a question of flavor design.

The results of one study can be found on "California Wine And food's" website. The Hogue Cellars did a 4 year trial study for natural cork, synthetic cork and screw cap. The results of this study are disclosed there.